Moss Garden

Japan's famous moss gardens — most famously at Saihō-ji in Kyoto — offered Kitaoka a subject that suited his interest in pure texture and color field: the close-cropped, velvety expanse of moss across stones and forest floor creates a near-abstract composition of greens, grays, and shadow. Kitaoka renders the garden's hushed, contemplative quality through the woodblock's capacity for nuanced gradation of tone, the stillness of the scene echoing the meditative calm the moss garden was designed to evoke.